Red chick with blue legs ?

[I Love Feather Babies]

She is really cool looking! I’m not used to seeing that combo at all. What breed or breeds is your pullet?

Not sure. I got her and two others from some friends of mine that they incubated. They have some that lay a deep olive color and I told them I would love to some. Of the 3 that hatched, she is the only pullet. The other two are cockerels.

 

[Fluster Cluck Acres]

Of the 3 that hatched, she is the only pullet. The other two are cockerels.

sounds like my luck when hatching chickens

 

[Fluster Cluck Acres]

Are those the ones we've already talked about, Triscuit and the two with light legs?

No, I have 3 that are 4-months. One is Stevie Nicks, a pullet from my SLW hen. She is from charcoal and a SLW hen. She’s mostly black. Her legs I think would be considered green. They’re very reptilian looking and appear to be yellow with a layer of dark on top. In this group I also have a solid black cockerel with black legs from a lavender Orpington hen. Then there’s Cotronella: The white cockerel with yellow eyes.

Is Charcoal the father of that cockerel?

If yes, then it means:

Charcoal's chicks will not be 100% sex links for leg color.

When the mother has light legs, any chick with dark legs must be a female. When the mother has dark legs, a dark-legged chick can be either gender.

A chick with light legs can be male or female, no matter what color legs the mother has, because it looks like Charcoal has one gene for light legs and one for dark legs.

Charcoal's own dark legs must be caused partly by whatever genes are causing his feather color, not by being pure for the dark legs gene.

In case you are trying to make sense of the chicken calculator or pages that talk about genes by name: the gene for light legs is Id, for "Inhibitor of dermal melanin." That means it blocks (inhibits) black pigment (melanin) in the skin (dermal). So Id is the dominant gene, that blocks dark pigment and causes light legs. id+ is the recessive gene, that allows dark pigment in the legs. The + marks it as the wild-type gene, found in the original wild ancestors of chickens. Personally, I could not remember that abbreviation going with that effect until I worked through the whole name of the gene and realized it was just big words for the actual effect

 

[NatJ]

No, I have 3 that are 4-months. One is Stevie Nicks, a pullet from my SLW hen. She is from charcoal and a SLW hen. She’s mostly black. Her legs I think would be considered green. They’re very reptilian looking and appear to be yellow with a layer of dark on top. In this group I also have a solid black cockerel with black legs from a lavender Orpington hen. Then there’s Cotronella: The white cockerel with yellow eyes.

Hmm. The black feather color, that can go with black on the legs too, is definitely complicating things.

But the white cockerel, with light legs from Charcoal and a dark-legged mother, should be proof that Charcoal has the gene for light legs.

I think the way it worked:
--Charcoal inherited light legs from his father, and dark legs from his mother. But he looks like he has dark legs, because of some genes associated with his feather color.

--Charcoal produced a dark-legged daughter, who does NOT have any feather-color genes that would make her legs dark anyway. This proves that Charcoal must have the gene for dark legs (presumably from his mother).

--Charcoal produced a light-legged son, from a dark-legged mother (who is also the mother of Charcoal). This proves that Charcoal must have the gene for light legs, because he gave it to his son. Charcoal must have inherited that gene from his light-legged father.

If I try to work it any other way, I run into something impossible.
If Charcoal were pure for the dark legs gene, he would have to inherit it from his father and his mother. But breeding a dark-leg rooster (Charcoal, in this thought-experiment) to his dark-leg mother would produce only dark-leg chicks of both genders. But Charcoal and his mother produced a light-leg son, so one of them must have the light leg gene. The hen cannot have both dark legs (given to Charcoal) and light legs (given to Charcoal's son), because the hen only has one Z chromosome.

So Charcoal cannot be pure for dark legs (above paragraph) and he cannot be pure for light legs (because he produced Triscuit the dark-leg pullet), which means he must be split with one gene each for light and dark legs.

I only see two ways that logic would be wrong:
--if a mutation happened (highly unlikely)
--or if one of the chicks had a different parent (not fathered by Charcoal, or the dark-legged hen not really being the mother of Charcoal, or Charcoal's mother not being the mother of his son.) I can't judge how likely that is or isn't.

If you have several of those dark-legged hens, it might be possible that one has the gene for dark legs (and was the mother of Charcoal) and that another has "light" legs that look dark because of other genes, and was the mother of Charcoal's son. I don't think this is particularly likely, just mentioning it to be thorough.

 

[Red Mangrove]

@NatJ what genetic information is on the W chromosome? I've been following along on your genetics conversation and I'm genuinely curious now

I'm gonna guess it's almost exclusively female reproductive stuff for obvious reasons

 

[NatJ]

@NatJ what genetic information is on the W chromosome? I've been following along on your genetics conversation and I'm genuinely curious now

I'm gonna guess it's almost exclusively female reproductive stuff for obvious reasons

I don't really know. It seems like all the interesting stuff I find is about the Z chromosome, not the W chromosome.

The Z chromosome has a number of genes that are definitely useful, so it tends to get the attention. For example, any trait that can be seen at hatching can be used for making sexlinks that are easily sexed at hatch (gold/silver, barring, fast/slow feathering, chocolate). There is also a gene for white eggshells.

There is a wikipedia article that has a bit about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system
"It is unknown whether it might be that the presence of the W chromosome induces female features, or whether instead it is the duplication of the Z chromosome that induces male ones; unlike mammals, no birds with a double W chromosome (ZWW) or a single Z (Z0) have been satisfactorily documented."

 

[Fluster Cluck Acres]

Hmm. The black feather color, that can go with black on the legs too, is definitely complicating things.

Is there a way to tell, visually, if the color on a bird’s legs is from the feather color, or not? And are you suspecting that perhaps Charcoal has light legs but they look dark from his feather color?

The vast majority of Charcoal’s offspring have been black, and legs appear dark (even from hens with light legs) but perhaps that’s from feather color?

So Charcoal cannot be pure for dark legs (above paragraph) and he cannot be pure for light legs (because he produced Triscuit the dark-leg pullet), which means he must be split with one gene each for light and dark legs.

My head is kind of spinning, and I drew myself a map to follow along, lol, but everything you’ve said makes sense.

I only see two ways that logic would be wrong:
--if a mutation happened (highly unlikely)
--or if one of the chicks had a different parent (not fathered by Charcoal, or the dark-legged hen not really being the mother of Charcoal, or Charcoal's mother not being the mother of his son.) I can't judge how likely that is or isn't.

Is a mutation more likely because of the inbreeding, or does that take a few generations before things like that begin to happen?

It’s not impossible that I mixed up who the moms are, but i have a high level of confidence that I’m accurate.

Also I realized I was very tired when I replied to you last night. I didn’t mean to be so abrupt and have to so many typos! Citronella the white cockerel does NOT have yellow eyes. He has very normal eyes.

So if a chick is from Charcoal and a light legged hen, do you still think only the pullets would have dark legs? Or is it a crap shoot since he carries both? And would a yellow-legged hen also be considered a light-legged hen?

 

[NatJ]

Is there a way to tell, visually, if the color on a bird’s legs is from the feather color, or not? And are you suspecting that perhaps Charcoal has light legs but they look dark from his feather color?

With some feather colors, it's fairly obvious:
black feathers cause black legs
light gold or buff feathers do not cause black legs

But some others are obviously harder, like Charcoal.

Yes, I think Charcoal must have one copy of the gene for light legs, so his legs "should" look light. But since they DO look dark, that must be caused by something! Probably he's genetically "black" with large amounts of other-color leakage. That would explain the leg color, and also how many of his chicks have been black. (Of course his chicks could be black because of their mother's color. Most blue chickens are genetically black, plus the blue gene to turn black into blue.)

The vast majority of Charcoal’s offspring have been black, and legs appear dark (even from hens with light legs) but perhaps that’s from feather color?

I think feather color is definitely involved there. But some of the legs would also be dark because of the gene for dark legs.

My head is kind of spinning, and I drew myself a map to follow along, lol, but everything you’ve said makes sense.

I didn't quite have to draw a map, but I was pretty close as I was working through the options I thought I could get there logically, but then to make sure I wasn't missing anything...!

Is a mutation more likely because of the inbreeding, or does that take a few generations before things like that begin to happen?

Inbreeding does not make mutations any more likely to happen.

But if there is a mutation, inbreeding the offspring of the mutated bird makes it more likely that you will see the effects of the mutation. So inbreeding makes it more likely to be visible, not more likely to happen in the first place.

It’s not impossible that I mixed up who the moms are, but i have a high level of confidence that I’m accurate.

In that case, I'll keep assuming that you are right about the parentage.

Also I realized I was very tired when I replied to you last night. I didn’t mean to be so abrupt and have to so many typos! Citronella the white cockerel does NOT have yellow eyes. He has very normal eyes.

So if a chick is from Charcoal and a light legged hen, do you still think only the pullets would have dark legs? Or is it a crap shoot since he carries both? And would a yellow-legged hen also be considered a light-legged hen?

Yellow legs and white legs are both "light."

If you breed Charcoal to a light-legged hen, I would expect all cockerels to have light legs. Some pullets would have dark legs, and some would have light legs.

So you could be confident that any dark-legged chick was a pullet, but would have to wait and see about the ones with light legs.

(Except then we get into the feather colors again. A black chick might have legs that look "dark" but still be a cockerel. I don't know enough about the feather/leg colors to accurately predict for all possibilities, but I think it's safe to figure that chicks the color of Triscuit will only show dark legs if they are pullets.)

 

[RememberTheWay]

Sorry for the double post. We’re having hurricane remnants and lost power briefly.

Charcoal has dark legs. I realize I didn’t include that in my post.

I seem to hatch an unnaturally large percentage of males, so this is exciting. It also may partially account for why I haven’t seen this color of legs before.

I am not, so this is such great information and really fascinating! Thanks so much for all this great info!!

The sex of a chick is determined by your hens. If your hatching lots of males try getting new hens from different lines. The chick sex is determined by the chromosome that the hen gives up "Z" and it's a male, "W" and it's a female. Your rooster always passes on "Z" because that's all he has to give. I have found that I have hens who genetically favor males and seem to always give up a "Z" instead of "w" and I have hens who genetically favor females. It's all very fascinating really